Episode 58 – The Cuts of 'Heaven's Gate'

Famed as the movie that destroyed a studio and an Oscar-winner, writer/director Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate got its reputation replenished with a Criterion edition in 2012. But why do some sophisticated film-viewers still view it as an eye-roll-worthy indulgence? On this episode is Michael Epstein, director of the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate, as we discuss:

• United Artists’ executive Steven Bach’s book, Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate, from which Epstein adapted his doc;

• if this book is the greatest making-of-a-movie book, or merely the best one written by an insider;

• the bogus narrative that the movie destroyed United Artists;

• how the book contributes to the narrative of Gate as an indulgent slog;

• an alternate theory on how inflation destroyed American politics and film in the 1970s;

• and why it doesn’t matter how much was spent on a piece of art years, decades, or centuries ago.

Also:

• How Epstein’s doc precipitated Gate’s 2004 restoration and DVD release;

• why Cimino’s perfectionism, now timeless, is still treated as a negative;

• whether or not the film could have survived if its “internal rhythms” were cut down;

• my edible-enhanced screening last year where I declared the movie “one of the greatest movies ever made”;

• what enhancement actually led to that declaration (spoiler: not the edibles);

• and the identity of the mysterious “Famous Director” Bach covertly discussed replacing Cimino with if he’d gone through with firing the writer/director mid-shoot.

Michael Epstein is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker whose work has been awarded two George Foster Peabody awards, two Primetime Emmys, a Writers Guild Award, a Clio, as well as numerous other distinctions. His films include House Two, Combat Diary: The Marines in Lima Company, along with the John Lennon docs LennoNYC and John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky. He’s also the writer/host of the Murder in House Two podcast.

The 216-minute director’s cut of Heaven’s Gate is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Criterion. Its 219-minute Premiere cut is available on VOD and on DVD from MGM. The 149 theatrical cut briefly showed up on MGM’s HD channel but is, apparently, only available on the Region 2 DVD. Director Steven Soderbergh’s 106-minute “immoral and illegal” “Butcher’s Cut” is available to stream on his website, Extension 765.

Episode 53 – Mike Nichols' Audio Commentaries

The best way we thought to celebrate the great writer Mark Harris’s new book Mike Nichols: A Biography, a book about the famed director filled with the instructive anecdotes he used as tools for directing actors, was to find the best examples the public has to those anecdotes in Nichols’ own voice. In the DVD audio commentaries for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, and Catch-22, all conducted by audio commentary-innovator Steven Soderbergh, Nichols masterclasses his way through his celebrated first three films as director. On today’s episode, Ted Haycraft is back to discuss:

• how innovative it was for a commentary to have Nichols to discuss his perceived failures on Catch-22;

• if these first three films were indeed his peak, his reputation on New York stage and on film as the “Michael Jordan” of directing actors;

• how he runs a rehearsal;

• and what particular directing questions and techniques he reveals in these commentaries.

Also:

• Last year’s oral-history biography Life Isn’t Everything: Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends by Ash Carter and Sam Kashner;

• Nichols’s editor Sam O’Steen’s great book on editing Cut to the Chase: Forty-Five Years of Editing America’s Favorite Movies;

• Soderbergh’s other incisive commentaries for his and others’ films;

• how Elizabeth Taylor inspired a scene on a toilet in Catch-22;

• if The Graduate is the Citizen Kane of the American New Wave;

• and where Nichols stands among that New Wave.

Ted Haycraft is film critic for Evansville’s WFIE-14 and co-hosts Cinema Chat on its Midday show. He can also be found on Cinema Chat’s Facebook page.

The Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? commentary is available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive. The Graduate commentary is available from Criterion on DVD and Blu-ray. Catch-22’s commentary is available from Paramount on DVD.

Episode 48 – 'Rumble Fish'

Crossover episode! Joining this episode are AJ Gonzalez and Bryan Connolly, hosts of The Directors’ Wall podcast, currently going through the filmography of Francis Ford Coppola, to discuss the second half of the filmmaker’s Oklahoma-shot S.E. Hinton adaptations. On this episode we talk:

• this “art-house film for teenagers” (that teenagers sadly rejected);

• its dream-like black-and-white images;

• its young man’s inventive energy;

• why French filmmaker Chris Marker didn’t even last a week as the film’s 2nd Unit Director;

• the influence of Koyaanisqatsi on the film;

• and how it’s a film about time in the past, present, and future.

Also:

• Nicolas Cage’s speaking-part film debut;

• Mickey Rourke’s whispering Camus-influenced performance;

• the film’s musically balletic gang fight set piece;

• its Touch of Evil vibe;

• the push-pull in Coppola’s career between bombastic epics and intimate character studies;

• and his commitment to be experimental in both modes.

Along with co-hosting The Directors’ Wall podcast, Gonzalez writes about film, alongside his wife (and past guest-host) Lani, on their blog Cinema Then and Now.

Connolly, along with co-hosting The Directors’ Wall podcast, also co-hosts The World is Wrong podcast, which positively celebrates movies the world is wrong about, with Andras Jones. A filmmaker, painter and author living in Austin, TX, Connolly also co-wrote Destroy All Movies: The Complete Guide to Punks On Film and numerous shows for Adult Swim.

Rumble Fish is available to rent VOD and on Blu-ray from Criterion.